


fever

by buries



Series: 100 word prompt fills [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-21
Updated: 2016-01-21
Packaged: 2018-05-15 07:56:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5777632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/pseuds/buries
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>i'm fine, she lies to herself.</i> or the one where bellamy reaffirms raven's purpose in camp with the help of a grand piano.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fever

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by [this picture](http://finnicks.tumblr.com/post/137735687897/dailybellamyblake-tomorrow-the100season3), _beware of anything you hear yourself saying often. ("I'm fine”)_ , and _fever_ , with the desire to do some free-writing, this came about.
> 
> this is set in some very far, far future. it features one of my favourite things — hand-kissing, and also a piano, so i guess we should technically say two. the end is slightly suggestive, however. please be aware of that.
> 
> unbeta'd, all mistakes are mine. thanks for reading! ♥

It isn’t her leg that pains her. Years ago, it had stopped throbbing. Sometimes she can feel the ghost of it on particular days, and then she tries to consult Monty’s diary. He’s recorded every little thing, from the days Bellamy’s come back injured to the ones where Octavia’s lead a party to the very hour and minute and second she complains of her leg feeling heavier than it’s settled to being.

According to his diary, it throbs for the hell of it. Unburdened by any particular anniversary, she finds she often forgets when it’s the day of the drop ship war. The battle of their first home. The place where she had found everything she had wanted and lost it within the same breath.

It’s that that causes a pain to spark through her.

Staring at the back of his head, Raven’s well-aware he knows she’s there. He’s sitting in the room they built years ago. Made out of scraps they’d found of the fallen bits of the Ark. Pieces of it that had crashed onto the earth, forgotten by them as they had thought their home had burned itself into ash and scattered the remains of their previous lives on the tops of the trees in the woods around them in some grand memorial none of them had been invited to.

The Ark is much bigger now. She refuses to call it by its new name. It’ll always, to her, be like that boat in the book with the flimsy pages. Two by two, they walk hand in hand, ensuring that mankind isn’t to ever be without a specific type of person or creature or _thing_ when the world wants to wipe itself clean.

It’s not her favourite story. She knows it’s not his, either.

But she stares at the back of his head unblinkingly, well-aware that her gaze is hard. It burns into him, and she hopes he can feel it, even though he doesn’t stop. Not one cell in his body seems to react to her. It’s the way she likes it, how he doesn’t pause, panic, or even grow impenetrable.

His fingers glide across the keys of the grand piano effortlessly. 

“For someone with stubby fingers, you sure are good at that thing,” she says.

He stops, but the notes don’t fall flat. 

Turning, he looks at her from over his shoulder. “You never complained before.”

Raven rolls her eyes, and takes that as an invitation to approach. Walking slowly, he doesn’t seem to mind that she drags her leg a little. His eyes never move down to her brace, keeping them on her as she narrows her eyes and even feels compelled enough to poke her tongue out at him. His face scrunches up a little.

Coming to stand on the side of the bench he’s not closest to, she doesn’t sit immediately. Every time she comes into the makeshift musical room, or the one that’s simply big enough and less crowded and rowdy to host such an item, she always finds herself looking at the grand piano. He’s always said it’s with an intent eye, like she wants to pull it apart and rebuild it to see how it works. He’s caught her, several times, looking at the strings, like she’s trying to figure out how the sound comes out from the mere press of a white rectangle that never seems to stain.

Once, she had barked at him to press on a note while she watched the insides of the piano. Like a surgeon, she’d tried to operate on it, but found that no matter how softly he pressed a key, she’d pull her head from out beneath the lid with a pounding headache.

He’d laughed for the first time in months that day. She thinks the throbbing in her skull had been worth it.

The grand piano is the finest possession the Ark had taken from the mountain. Even though there’s now more medicine than they know what to do with, books he loves and adores, and clothes that she can wear that has the fresh smell of not being blood and mud, it’s the grand piano that’s the most precious of them all.

Bellamy doesn’t play for anyone. Even though the youngest is now old enough to talk and know how to project her voice, he never holds a concert despite her calling for one. He’s the better player out of the lot of them. Monty has no rhythm, but prefers to battle it out with Monroe on the keys. Octavia’s always too shy to press the keys, like she’s afraid that her fingers will break them somehow despite having the softest touch Raven’s ever known. Clarke always sits on that long seat and watches. Raven’s studied her face, how her eyes never leave Bellamy’s profile as she smiles like she doesn’t regret ever coming back.

Raven lacks any skill in moving her fingers along them, always holding the notes for too long. But that never stops him from trying to teach her how to play the knocking rhythm she and Octavia had devised. Octavia’s able to play it like it’s some incredible song from before the apocalypse. Raven always finds her fingers seem to pull at the strings, making them screech.

Sitting down, she doesn’t drop herself like a heavy burden. Unlike her drop ship, she sits neatly, gently, even nicely. He turns and his knee bumps into her. She can feel it, even though it’s through the leg she considers to sometimes be more of a shackle than anything else.

“What’s going on?” he asks.

She shrugs, and avoids his gaze, mumbling, “Nothing.”

He tilts his head and raises his eyebrows. “It can’t be nothing,” he says. He doesn’t look back at the piano like so many do. In awe of it, still, even after they’d brought it back and cleaned it up so long ago.

“I’m fine,” she says. He doesn’t answer, continuing to look at her. 

Looking away, Raven lets her gaze glide along the piano keys. She doesn’t count how long she takes to look at it, wondering if he’ll let her open the lid to look at it again. It’s an excitement that thrums beneath her skin, but she knows Bellamy won’t humour her this evening.

After a long pause, one where his gaze hasn’t moved from her face, she sighs.

Biting her bottom lip, Raven looks up at him before she leans back, rocking on the seat. Shifting, she pulls her bum leg up, digging her fingers unkindly into the flesh of her upper thigh, and throws it as well as she can, brace and all, over the side of the bench. Bellamy follows, but more easily. His knees now bump into both of her own.

She keeps her legs where they are. She likes the look of his knees touching hers. Dark jeans with grease staining them melting into darker jeans with muddied patches and threads coming loose.

“I’m fine,” she says again, more convincingly. 

To her own ears, she can already hear how it’s a lie. Anyone untrained in listening to her tone, how she pushes the words out with practiced ease, would think her to be telling the truth.

Bellamy cocks an eyebrow. He lowers his gaze, finally relieving her of the burning press of his dark eyes, and picks up her fingers from between her legs to fiddle with them. Looking down at his fingers, she sees how long they are. Monty said something about them being fingers made for the piano, but Raven doesn’t really know. Fingers are fingers. Sometimes they’re long, sometimes they’re short and fat and covered in grime.

Sometimes they’re capable of piecing someone back together. They’re just fingers. A body part. Nothing more than flesh and muscle and bone and nerve-endings.

He takes a breath in. “You went out today, Raven. It’s okay if you’re not fine.”

“But I _am_ ,” she says. She lifts her gaze and sees he hasn’t so much as moved his away from their fingers. She tries not to become distracted by it. She’s always liked how he’s observed her too intently, from fingers to face to hips to thighs. His touch is featherlight and almost ticklish if she focuses on it for too long.

“You were attacked,” he says, lifting his gaze. Raven looks down at their fingers, finding the sight of them no longer frightens her. It hasn’t in a long while. “Miller told me you did good.”

“Miller did good,” she mumbles. “Saved my ass.”

“That’s what you do,” he says. She can see him trying to catch her gaze, dipping his head lower. She refuses to lift her eyes as she watches her fingers, now taking the lead as his go purposefully slack in her own to let her do her bidding. “You look out for your people. Without you, they would dead.”

“Without me, they wouldn’t have been caught by the Grounders,” Raven sighs. Her fingers go slack in his, but she feels his grip onto her own to keep them there. Keeping her grounded within the moment, refusing to let her wander back to that clearing.

The trees had been so thin and tightly clustered. She knows it’d been spacious, hilly and uneven ground. She’s used to it. Manoeuvring through the woods on a ground that isn’t like the metal floor of the Ark almost feels like home. The presence of the Grounders, with arrows flying toward her, isn’t very homely at all.

She’s almost there, on the very cusp of it, but Bellamy runs his fingers on the inside of her palms, tracing her lifelines horribly. The light sensation is enough to pull her back to him.

She can picture his face. Empathetic. Caring. Kind of expressing she’s an idiot. It’s a cute look, but it isn’t enough to see her lift her gaze.

“You’re not caught, are you?” His voice is patient, kind. She’s heard him speak like this to Monroe before. Kane may be a moron most of the time, but he hadn’t been by promoting Bellamy to being in a position of leadership when it came to the Guard. “You got away. It was _your_ quick thinking that got you out of there.”

Licking her bottom lip, Raven feels the urge to protest rise. It’s true, she can see it, but despite how arrogant she can be, she isn’t filled with the need to sing along to any tune he can create for her victory song. 

“You need to stop being hard on yourself,” he says. She looks up at him with the intent for it to be quick, but she finds she can’t quite look away from his gaze. She watches him straighten his back, curl his fingers around hers, and look down at their hands. He doesn’t look up at her when he says, “When you do, I want you on my team.”

Something warm overwhelms her. She wonders if he can feel it burn through the skin of his palms. She stares at him for a long time. “What?”

Looking up at her, he repeats, “I want you on my team.”

Blinking at him stupidly, Raven can’t shake herself out of it. Confined to the four walls of her workstation, it’d been a leniency, a _gift_ from Abby and Kane, that she had been allowed on that patrol. She doubts Bellamy had anything to do with it. It’d been her own barging in on the meeting, steamrolling right over all of them, and her possibly kicking Bellamy to the curb, although she can’t quite guarantee that the plan had been he’d go on the scout all along, that had seen her score herself a place on that mission.

She knows Bellamy fights for her in his own way. Demanding she be on the other side of his radio. The one who talks to him over the rest of them. When he asks for her in that crackling voice of his over the airwaves, she knows it’s him, making a point.

She doesn’t know how much time passes while she’s locked in a quiet stupor. It’s just an invitation, a hollow reassurance that she had done good. But despite her attempts to write it off as _hollow_ , Raven can feel the weight of his belief in her in her hands.

Her purpose has never been to serve him. But she’s found it in guiding him. Standing beside him, she’s seen how her shadow doesn't look half bad beside, and sometimes merging, with his.

After she opens her mouth, a moment passes, and then she hears her voice, soft, float between them. “I thought you didn’t mix business with pleasure.”

The corner of his lips quirk upward. “I never said anything about you being pleasurable to be around.”

Raven pulls her hand from his to shove him on the shoulder. He barely swings, like a pendulum, but he laughs, and it makes it worth it, to hear his laugh mingle with her own.

“I’m serious,” he says, once they’ve settled. He takes her hands again, as though he can sear his conviction through her skin. The way to talk to her has always been through her hands. If she can feel it thrum and die between her fingers, she can trust in it. It’s why she’s held so tightly onto him all these months. “If you want to —”

“ _If_?” Raven looks at him like he’s grown those two extra heads Cerberus has. “You’re an idiot. There’s no way in hell I would say no to being apart of your team, Bellamy.”

He smiles, ducking his head. It looks a little shy, and she likes it. “Good.”

When he looks up at her, he’s smiling. Big and bright, better than any full moon he’s pulled her out of her cot to see.

“I’d prefer it,” she says. Wonders if she can make pull a red flush to his cheeks to accompany that small, boyish smile. But what she feels compelled to say is the truth. She can make him flush a little later, even though she hopes he does with what she doesn't hesitate to admit to herself. Leaning forward, she says, seriously, “I don’t trust anyone else.”

He looks up at her, his expression unreadable for a moment. It flickers, but she knows he’s touched. His gaze is unwavering as he says, “I don’t trust anyone else to have my back.”

Except Octavia. But that’s a damn given. Raven trusts Octavia with her life. She trusts Octavia to look out for the one person she would throw herself into the line of fire for. And she knows Octavia trusts her with her life — with the person who has been her home since she had been born.

Raven feels her lips curve upward, her neck flush hot and red. Instead of _him_ being the one covered head to toe in a burn of embarrassment, it’s her.

 _I’m fine_ , she lies to herself. _I’m fine._ She needs to shake it off.

Lifting his hand to her lips, she kisses the back of his fingers. The broken flesh of his knuckles has healed over nicely. Sometimes she forgets he’d gotten into a particularly bad fight a month ago by looking at his hands. Rough to the touch, but gentle in their handling. With how his skin doesn’t seem blistered and scarred, she forgets that he’s capable of pulling apart this grand piano with his bare teeth in a fit of typical Blake rage.

What she does know, though, is how soft they are. Gentle, appreciative, even skilled in keeping her close, refusing to let the tether binding them together snap and see her become homeless once more. 

She also knows that the hands she holds in her own are just as strong as his belief in her happens to be. And it makes her flush all over again.

“Now,” she says, straightening her back. Pursing her lips, she hopes she comes off a little pompous. “Play me a song.”

And he does. After he plays her a melody, he plays her.


End file.
